Ryan, Murray go to work on federal finances

WASHINGTON – One is tall and affable, the other short and a little more no-nonsense – they are Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and they are the immediate best hope for America sidestepping a Washington fiscal battle in January like the one in September and October.

Ryan and Murray last week launched the first House-Senate budget conference committee to convene in four years. It was an outgrowth of the deal forged Oct. 16 to reopen the government and allow the federal government to continue borrowing money.

They struck a conciliatory tone. They greeted each other with a handshake.

“Democrats didn't create all these problems and neither did Republicans,” Murray said at the opening. From Ryan: “No one has to abandon their principles here. … We have to find where they overlap.”

With a Dec. 13 deadline, the committee will seek to reconcile the $91 billion difference between the budgets passed earlier this year, one by Senate Democrats, one by House Republicans, and will address the next round of automatic spending cuts set to begin in January.

If successful, their work could go a long way toward averting a fiscal crisis – when the government funding deadline arrives Jan. 15, or the debt ceiling suspension deadline hits on Feb. 7. If not, those dates will once again become leverage points in Congress' volatile and hostile debate over taxing and spending.

A lot is riding on the skill, knowledge and style of Murray and Ryan.

RYAN: A CHARMING, AFFABLE NUMBERS GUY

Paul Ryan's opponents paint him as uncaring to the point of willing to push seniors off a cliff, as one memorable 2011 TV ad illustrated for critics of his fiscally conservative approach to Medicare and Social Security.

But supporters, and even some detractors, often open a conversation about the Wisconsin Republican and House Budget Committee chairman with “he's a great guy,” and how much he cares about people.

Ryan is known as unfailingly polite. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., a liberal stalwart, told the news website BuzzFeed that when she ran into Ryan at an airport “he quickly grabbed my suitcase” and carried it to the car for her. When he became the highest-ranking Republican on the House Budget committee in 2006, he made a point to get to know the staffers working on that committee, even taking them out to dinner.

“The irony is that Paul wants to save these programs” for the long term, said former Ryan staffer Chauncey Goss, speaking of Medicare and other entitlements.

Ryan's national profile is closely tied to his entitlement reform proposals. He first garnered the national spotlight in 2010 when he offered his “Roadmap to Prosperity” as an alternative to President Barack Obama's budget. Among the roadmap's proposals was a plan to change Medicare to a voucher system starting in 2022.

Ryan was quickly attacked. Critics said the voucher would threaten Medicare. A liberal advocacy group, the Agenda Project, ran ads in Ryan's home state featuring a man who looked similar to Ryan shoving an elderly woman in a wheelchair off a cliff. After Mitt Romney selected Ryan as his running mate in the 2012 presidential campaign, the proposals became a frequent point of contention.

“Their ideas are old and their ideas are bad, and they eliminate the guarantee of Medicare,” Vice President Joe Biden said during his debate with Ryan.

“He's a believer in the free market, that the market will be more beneficial to people than government programs,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin.

At the first budget conference committee meeting Wednesday, Ryan pushed for entitlement changes, saying an overhaul would keep these programs alive for future generations. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, he indicated some willingness to compromise on automatic spending cuts in exchange for modest entitlement changes.

“He's going to be open-minded. He wants to get a deal done,” Goss said, “but he's not going to compromise what he believes in.”

Taxes will be a tricky subject. During the budget committee meeting, Ryan said that any increase in tax revenues would need to come by growing the economy, not raising taxes.

The congressman is normally first referred to as a “numbers guy,” but the next adjective is often “charming” or “charismatic.”

Those skills will likely be on display during the talks, but they've also helped him win elections eight times in a moderate district. In 2012, he won by his closest margin yet, but still by 11.5 percentage points.

He regularly engages with his critics at town hall meetings. “He looks you in the eye and is sincere in what he says,” Burden said. “The same skills he has in budget negotiations come across in any face-to-face interactions.”

MURRAY: TOUGH, ORGANIZED, METHODICAL

Supporters of Sen. Patty Murray almost all agree on one thing.

“You underestimate her at your own risk,” said Dwight Pelz, chairman of the Washington State Democratic Party. Jeff Bjornstad, the senator's former chief of staff, and others echoed the remark, almost word for word.

Murray's career in politics, in fact, began with a foe who underestimated her. In the early 1980s, the mother of two discovered that Washington state planned to cut funding for early childhood education. She drove to the state capitol and met with a legislator. The legislator told her that she couldn't change a thing. He said that Murray was “just a mom in tennis shoes.”

She not only went on to win that battle, but Murray kept marching forward into bigger political contests. She ran for U.S. Senate in 1992, and the long-ago insult became her rallying cry.

Twenty-one years later, Murray is the fourth-ranked Democrat in Senate leadership, chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee and co-chairwoman of the House-Senate budget conference committee. This isn't Murray's first time around the budget block. In 2011, she co-chaired the super committee tasked with finding ways to cut the federal deficit and thus avert automatic budget cuts known as sequestration from going forward. The initiative failed, and the cuts went into effect in March.

In 2012 she took what many saw as a thankless job, leading the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Some predicted an election bloodbath for Democrats, but Murray delivered a net two new Democratic seats, further cementing the party's Senate majority.

Until earmarks were banned in 2011, Murray was a strong defender of this designated spending for local districts. Some of her closest Senate mentors were noted appropriators, including the late Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia. In fiscal 2010, Murray won or helped win 191 earmarks totaling $223 million for Washington, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Murray's opponent in her 2010 Senate race referred to her as “Pork Patty.”

She has also looked for ideological and pragmatic guidance to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.

At Wednesday's budget conference committee meeting, Murray stressed that she's seeking a “balanced approach” to replace sequester cuts. She's willing to accept some spending cuts she said, but only if Republicans are willing to close tax loopholes used by wealthy Americans and big corporations.

“Sequestration is bad policy,” she said, “But it is going to continue to cost us jobs and cut vital services until we get a bipartisan deal to replace it that is fair for seniors and the middle class.”

She's not after a “grand bargain” from the budget conference committee, but a small deal that will keep government open until Sept. 30 and prevent the U.S. from lurching from one fiscal crisis to the next.

“It's really fascinating and amazing to me that she's never forgotten why she's in the U.S. Senate – which is to be a voice for normal Americans,” Bjornstad said, adding that Murray is a strong negotiator, organized and attentive to detail.

Murray's colleagues, on both sides of the aisle, praise her leadership style. Mikulski has called Murray a “20-year, overnight sensation.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate budget committee, praised Murray after her budget passed the Senate. Sessions said he didn't agree with the substance of her plan, but “she makes clear decisions and sticks by them and executes them. I respect that.”